Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 26, 2019 | Turnaround Time - Who's On Your Team?

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May 26, 2019 | Turnaround Time - Who's On Your Team? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's turnaround time.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's the forest of five weeks in turnaround time.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh graduation, commencement.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have been to a graduation ceremony or commencement?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my, a lot of you.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you gone to a graduation party?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have just sent money so you wouldn't have to go to the party?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I see Lori up there.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think she's probably been to more parties than anybody.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um great to see you this morning.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who are just visiting or you're in for a uh graduation ceremony or something like that, we're in a series called Turnaround Time.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have two texts this month, this five-part series.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is one, and the other is a book by a guy, a Kansan, named Greg Brennerman.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Greg grew up in the Mennonite community of Heston, Kansas, about 3,500 people just north of Wichita.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh became a believer when he was young.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: His great uncle Lyle Yost had founded uh Fortune 500 company uh called uh the Heston Corporation, you know, made tractors and all that other kind of stuff.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think his dad Howard became president, etc.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: etc.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So Greg uh grew up learning how to do hard work and so forth, came up here to Washburn University, greatest university in the entire nation, and did really great, going to the business school, went to Harbor Business School afterwards, did great there, got hired out of there by the Bain Corporation, I think in Massachusetts, uh Mitt Romney running it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: They assigned him to try to, it was one of those turnaround corporations where they assign workers to try to help companies recover.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he got assigned to the worst airline in America, Continental Airlines.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Within eight years, he had turned it around.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: They called him the king of the turnarounds.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Harvard Law Review.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: They call him the turnaround guru on our Washburn University website.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So he came to town, he's sponsoring a special program that TBC businessmen are involved in, and that is mentoring business students at Washburn.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really cool.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Got to meet him a few months ago.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and then uh people would ask him to write a book, but he didn't write one for about 20 years.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people, his other friends, you know, had written books.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: He said, no, thanks.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then when he was in his middle 40s, he realized that he was, in his own words, uh underperforming in life.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Came across a verse in Revelation 3 about being lukewarm and God not liking lukewarm people, spitting them out of his mouth.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: He realized that, you know what, in my spiritual life, my family life, my money life, my friends' life, I'm underperforming.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, What if I take my five principles that I've been using in companies, and what if I flip them and make them personal and see if they work on me?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they did.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so he came out then with a book called Right Away and All at Once, the title letting us know that it doesn't take 10, 20, or 40 years to change your life, either as a corporation, a company, a business, or a person.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to do it quickly, right away and all at once.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: The subtitle is Five Steps to Transform Your Business and Enrich Your Life.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that five of the chapters in the book are How to Transform Your Business.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: The other five are How to Transform Your Personal Life.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Rodney Kinner and I had taught this book in our Men of Success on Wednesday morning.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: We thought, why not teach it to TBC?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this book, he asks and answers the question: Who needs a turnaround?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he answers, well, people in bad trouble or corporations in bad trouble need radical change just to survive, like Continental Airlines.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: But Burger King, when they contacted him about 9-11 time back then, they didn't need a radical change.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: They just realized they were underperforming.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says, a lot of us are that way.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're like me.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was satisfactorily underperforming.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody thought I was fine, but I wasn't.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We asked you, Rodney and I did three weeks ago, am I performing, are you performing in life to your full potential?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any areas in your life where you need to change?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we ask you those two questions and said, you know what?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you, like we, Rodney and I, feel like we could perform better, why not walk with us through this book?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why not do a turnaround?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we started going through the book, and what happens is he'll have five chapters for companies like Continental, but we were interested in the five chapters for changing your personal life, and we encouraged you, I encouraged you, I think, in the second week, to write a one-page go forward plan.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's his first step.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Grab one piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and write down where you believe that you would like to get in your life, where you're underperforming, where you think God, your wife, your husband, your family, your friends want you to improve.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And one way to do that is to look at the five Fs as your categories: faith, fitness, finance, family, and friends.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: In each of these areas.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Am I underperforming?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need to improve?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, faith is the one that, for Greg, is the most important.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he'd asked me a couple months ago.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I told him I was gonna probably do a series on this, and he said, send me the links when it happens.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So last a week or so ago, I sent him the links to the first two, and he wrote me this email uh last Sunday, and I thought I'd share a little bit of it with you.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Jim, thanks for forwarding the sermons on my book.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to both of them today.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: This was last Sunday, one before church and the other while I was working out after church.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome job.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to hearing the other three.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredibly humbling, you know, that you would be preaching on this.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, it's been fun seeing the book minister to others this spring.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the just the last couple of weeks, uh I went up to New York to be interviewed by Tim Keller.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I did a conference, a large conference in Atlanta.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they had me over to talk to the students at Oxford University in England, and then there was your sermon series.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: He said, This is way more joy than I deserve.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: May God bless you and the people at Topeka Bible in every way imaginable.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd ask him if there was anything that he would say to us as a congregation or would urge us.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he did include a paragraph about that.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if nothing else, I hope your congregation asks and answers the ultimate blue chip question.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you that have been here since the beginning of the series, he talks about blue chips, red chips, white chips, how most of us occupy ourselves with all the unimportant white chips when actually the blue chips are the game changers.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: The blue chip question for themselves as part of their go forward life plans, and here's the most important question to him.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: What does it take to become an intimate of God's?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: He states in his email that his favorite quotation is an A.W.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Tozer quotation.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: God plays no favorites, but he has intimates.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: People that he's close to.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he wants you to be one of his intimates.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, if nothing else, I hope your congregation asks and answers this question.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: What does it take for me to become an intimate of God's?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Answering that question ultimately changed my life and focus.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I pray it will theirs too.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So just a word from Greg this morning as of last week.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh just to notice that of those five F's, this is the in the faith category.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: What would it take for me to become an intimate with God?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we did that faith category.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: We covered that step.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, in fact, Rodney and I covered steps two and three.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Choose financial freedom.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's the line of work that Rodney's in at Meishauser.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I took think money out, not money in, which is have a plan for giving and being generous.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this week and next week, and we're done.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, and he doesn't talk about fitness, though that's you know one of the things I'm working on, but he doesn't talk about that in the book, just mentions it.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So this week and next week, we're in the categories of friends and family.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Step four is Build Your Team.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The title of the step for him is uh something like Build Your Life Team.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Subtitle Prune and Align for what it's worth, but for what it's worth.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But what you need to know is that your team are the people who help you become what you want to become in life.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your team, my team, are the people who help me become what I want to become in life, who help me, who help me accomplish my go forward life plan.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I love my team, I love these people who challenge me, who hold me accountable.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, everybody who's successful in life, think about it, has a team around them.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: The president, of course, has a cabinet and he has his personal advisors.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: The president of every company or corporation has a board and he has his personal advisors.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: The military has teams, it has SEAL teams, it has uh one of our elders, Dan Scoda, just became the top dog down here at the 160th Area Refueling down here, and he will tell you that he is successful because of the team of officers around him.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's the band of brothers, there's the SEAL teams, there's whatever team that you're in that you meet with that helps you accomplish what you want to accomplish in life.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Greg in his chapter mentions almost casually that even Jesus had a team.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: As he did.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And before I share a couple of verses, let me just share with you that Jesus did have sort of four levels of relationship.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: The widest, sociology would call it the public.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what we have at TBC, where you're sitting right now, the congregation, that's a large group of people.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sociology then talks about a social group.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe when you're out in the lobby afterwards, it's a smaller group.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe if you're in a class, I just stepped out of a class of 42 people upstairs.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be a group of people who are in a class, or they're in a group.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not all of those people, of course, would be on a team.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: They don't all know each other that well.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when you get down to what sociologists call the private category.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's your team or your small group.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's about six to twelve people.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the people who include your closest friends, but also include others that you see regularly who you look to to help you.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I decided to stop for a minute and mention that one of the most important groups at our church, a group of 12 people, a team that I am on, is the team of elders.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason this group is really important to me right now, and in fact to all of us, is that they're working really hard at what I call succession.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: What a lot of you call retirement.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: At least three times a week, somebody will come up and say something like, Jim, are you looking forward to retiring?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that was one of them last and last week, a couple days ago, someone said, Jim, you don't look old enough to retire.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And someone said, What are you gonna do when you retire?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have never, in the eight years since uh I asked the elders to start talking about succession, ever used the word retirement.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in retirement.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't talk about retirement.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Bible does talk about moving people to different jobs, and somewhere in the ministry I'll keep working, partly because I found that when I play golf more than once a week, right, Bob, I get worse.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: My score gets catastrophically worse.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not a solution for me, okay?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, no, the real issue here is it's not about me and it's not about retirement.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's about a group of men who've said, you know what, we need to look at the church.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: What's best for TBC?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: What's best for this church?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is, I believe, and the elders believe, that what's best for the church is when we find the best man to take over this place on stage and as the lead pastor, then I will move off to and do something else.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what that's gonna be, but it's not gonna be golf, I can tell you that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and because uh and we're in no desperate rush either.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm feel I feel, to be honest, just as invigorated, and I feel like I'm working just as hard as I ever have.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm fine there.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh thank the Lord for five-hour energy drinks, so I can keep going on Sunday morning, you know, until I'm 98.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: But so right now the elders are working really hard with the 45 applications that we have in for lead pastor.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're spending a lot of time on this.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for them.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're working hard this afternoon at 3 o'clock.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting together with some of them to Skype one of the candidates.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, if they get down and they say we went through the 45 and none of them are what we believe is the right man for TBC for us to recommend to the congregation for your approval, then we'll lay in a stock of energy drinks and I'll just keep going.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, so, but anyway, pray for the elders.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is a really important group for me.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really important team.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And without that team, we could not be successful.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now let's move to Jesus.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Jesus clearly had these four levels.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: He had these crowds of absolute thousands of people, maybe up to 20,000 that he fed, 5,000 men, then there were women and children.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then there were the followers in Luke 10.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, he sent out not just the 12, he sent out 70, 72 actually, to go to the villages.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: They were real Jesus followers, but by Acts chapter 1, there were 120 in the upper room.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of like the Koinonia class there.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: There were 118 of them.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I counted them down there this morning when I walked down.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just about the right number.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But see, those are followers.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: They come to us.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first one where you actually choose people, where you have a choice to build your own team.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came back from the temptation, chose two uh brother sets, Andrew, Peter, James, and John, and continued to choose his own team, his twelve disciples, right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: 1,070, 12.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is the team category, and of course he had an inner circle, you know their names, right?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Peter and the two J's.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: James and John.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where this actually applies to you.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So your largest, the all the people you know are not going to be on your team.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even the group you're in, whether it's a class or some other group of 40 people or 30 people or even 20 people, will not all know you really well.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the people you're gonna say, I've got a decision to make, and we go out for coffee.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you will have a team or should have a team that you should pick carefully of, let's say, six to twelve people.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: That will include, of course, your besties, your BFFs, those three people.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're married, one person of the opposite sex, and two people of the same sex.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and these people will be involved in your team, but these will be really important people that help you become what you want to become, what God wants you to become, what your family's always been on you to become, and so forth.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Bible actually isn't, it's not just sociology or looking at Jesus' example.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible's really clear, in my view, that you need a team.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: That to turn around your life, you need a team.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Samuel 22.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every man who was desperate, in debt, or discontented rallied around David and he became their leader.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: About 400 men were with him for Samuel.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The story is that David had become a hero in Israel.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: He had killed a great giant named Goliath.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Saul had become jealous.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: King Saul was chasing David.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: David's on the run through the wilderness.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's this charismatic leader, he's this giant killer, and so all of these underperforming people realized they needed a turnaround or they needed help, they started going to him to see if they could turn around their lives.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently it happened.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would guess that some of them wanted to be giant killers like David, too.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating that when uh 1 Samuel and especially 2 Samuel start listing the great warriors of ancient Israel, it lists those who killed giants, the brothers and cousins, it says, of Goliath, whom David killed, and they were all part of this group.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: My point is simply this: if you want to be a giant killer, then you need to get a giant killer on your team.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: You need to hang around a giant killer.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever you want to be in life, if you want to be a great evangelist, then get an evangelist on your team.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be fiscally brilliant, get a fiscally brilliant person on your team, right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your team are the people that you build around yourself to help you become successful.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the Bible is very clear that to be sharp, you need a team.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Iron sharpens iron.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: One person sharpens another.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 13, 20.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: To be wise, you need a team.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: To succeed in life, you need a team.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Plans fail when there is no counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 15, 22.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: To stay strong, you need a team, Ecclesiastes 4.12.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves, accord of three strands, is not easily broken.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So all of the above, everything I've said so far is to try to convince you that this is an important thing to do, that you need a team.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to get really practical in the last 10 minutes.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that is I want to ask you the question, who is on your team?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because you need the right people on your team, not the wrong people.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: To win, you need the right team.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 1.1, blessed is the one who doesn't walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the company of mockers.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want those people on your team.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you have those people on your team, you'll be embarrassed, you'll become a failure, you'll become like them.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: The importance of not having certain people on your team is illustrated by the story of the man who was driving with his friends in the car and he was pulled over.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: He saw the flashing light pulled over, the policeman comes up, looks in the window, and says, Congratulations, sir.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're having a safety competition.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: The first person that we found who had his seatbelt fastened has won the prize.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've just won$5,000.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask you, sir, what do you think you'll do with the money?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy says, I don't know, maybe take a cruise or, and he was kind of a jokester.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Maybe I'll go to driving school and get my license.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's a jokester.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And his wife looks over and she says, Don't listen to him, officer.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: He gets like this when he's drunk.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Woke up the guy in the back seat, and he looks up and he says, Oh no, I told you we'd never get away with a stolen car.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then there was banging from the trunk and a yell that said, Are we across the border yet?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure that happened, but what I do know is that's not the team that you want.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: That team will take you down.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh, who should be on your team is answered by a fascinating psalm, the only psalm of the 150 psalms, that is what you could call a turnaround psalm, the only psalm that is a resolution psalm, the only psalm in which David says, I need, I'm sat I'm unsatisfactorily underperforming, I need to be a better person.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he divides the psalm into two parts I need to be a better person at home, and I need to To be a better person outside of home in my social relationships.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what that is.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 101, a Psalm of David.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to sing about loyalty and justice.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: I resolve to succeed in, and this is the key word used three times in the Psalm, in integrity.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you get the feeling that David is saying, you know what?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have not lived the way I should live in integrity, which would put this in the last half of his career, the Bathsheba half of his career, the half of his career when he was a failure as a father and as a husband, and where he cries out, How can I improve?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've been underperforming.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the first half of the psalm is, I would like to improve my personal life.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, I resolve in verses 3 and 4 to walk in the integrity of my heart in my home.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: I need to guard my eyes so that I don't look at what I shouldn't look at.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I need to protect myself from having a perverted heart.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to not think about things that are evil.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really good stuff, and yet I'm not going to go there because that's not my topic this morning.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's an issue for you, as it well might be, because this is part of our go forward plans, then look up, verses 3 and 4.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, this morning, since we're in step four, it's all about our social life, our team.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in an absolutely unique set of verses in the entire Bible, King David says, I need to surround myself with the right people on my team.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 5a, first half of verse 5, whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, I will silence.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want any razor tongues on my team, he's saying.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want any slice and dicers on my team.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know those kinds of people when you're around them, they always have a sharp tongue and they're always ripping other people up.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, they're really fun to be around, but you know that after you leave them, there'll be a list of uh people just littering the ground that they have criticized around town at church or even among your friends.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, those are not the people I want on my team.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the second half of five, verse 5b, he says, haughty eyes and a proud heart I won't tolerate.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want any arrogance on my team.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: No people who think they're better than others, who are always comparing themselves, who look down on other people, who are haughty and who are proud.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I need humble people on my team, no arrogance.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: 6a, my eyes favor the faithful of the land.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: They may sit down with me.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, my team must consist of loyal people, faithful people that I trust, people I can count on.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if life goes bad for me, they'll stick with me, they won't run away, because they're the people who stay loyal to other people.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the kind of people that I need on my team, people that I trust.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says in 6B, the one who follows the way of integrity may serve me.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, I think, shocking because here's a guy who starts off the psalm by saying, I need to improve in integrity.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: My integrity has not been what I wish it was.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have a goal of improving.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, but I want people on my team that I can look up to in this area.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: People who are perhaps better than I am in this area.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: What a great idea.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want a team composed of people who you can, you know, you can say, I'm better than all of them.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, you want to look for people who are an example to you of what you want to become like.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 7, he says, I resolved that a fraud won't come to live in my home.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want any hypocrites, I don't want any people who talk cream and live skim milk, who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I need people who are consistent, who are not frauds.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, 7B, he says, one who tells lies won't stay in my presence.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want liars, I don't want cheats.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden you're going, well, that eliminates a lot of people.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago, a girl who grew up at TBC, had gone away to college for a couple years, came back and she said, you know, she talked to me, she said, it's just really hard finding friends at college who I can look up to.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: She says, yeah, in high school it was bad enough.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Two-thirds, maybe three-quarters of the kids I knew were cheating in high school here in Topeka, but she says, at college.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I think every single one of the 20 or so girls I hang around, every one of them cheats constantly.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then the reason I remember this is that Helen used this phrase about this.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: She says, it's like a cheating coalition.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: I never heard that one.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like a cheating coalition says they've all agreed they will all cheat off each other all the time.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a team that you want, but it means it's really hard sometimes to accumulate a team of people who have integrity.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't want, you want a team of people that you can look up to.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Greg says this, says it this way in his chapter.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Try to identify from whom you draw energy.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the people you want on your team are the people from whom you draw energy.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Who makes you come alive?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who leaves you feeling better?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Who mentors you?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is, who is your Paul?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you mentor?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Who is your Timothy?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't understand that, Paul was the mentor of Timothy in the New Testament.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Greg, a Christian, is using that figure of speech.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, he says, as you sit there and try to identify people who bring you energy that you would like to add to your team, you need to do the opposite.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now spend a few moments thinking of those people who drain you, who sap your energy, who drag you down.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: To execute your personal go forward plan, you must diminish or even remove, he says, those people from your team, your contact with the 5 or 10% of the people that you hang around who take away 80% of your energy.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: 80% of your time.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those are fine people, he said, and you don't want to hurt their feelings, but he talks about three circles in his own life: an inner circle, medium circle, outer circle, and how he regularly moves people from one circle to the other.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: If there are people who are taking way too much of his time and not giving him any energy or any help, he says, gently, lovingly, I will move them to a circle that's a little bit farther away.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas he says, there are some people who I find can build into me at this time in my life and I will move them closer.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what he's saying here, frankly, is very similar to something quite famous that was said a few years before by Jim Collins, who wrote one of the most famous business books of all time called Good to Great, talking about how a business can move from being a good business to a great business, or we could say a person like you or I move from being good in our lives to being great.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what Jim said famously is get the right people on your bus and get the wrong people off your bus.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: He said other things too, but everybody remembers this.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would say that since we're not talking about work here, but about your personal life, replace the word bus with van.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, because we're just talking about six, seven, eight people here.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so get the right people on your team in your van so that they can help you become all that God wants you to become, all that you want to become, all that your family and friends want you to become.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me wrap this up by giving you five simple, specific applications from uh from these texts that I've showed you.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, ask God for help.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, would you place the right people in my life?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Would you bring people by me and into my life who uh will help me become what I need to become?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ask God for help.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, build your team.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Realize this is something that you can be proactive about.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that you control.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that you do.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Just say, I'd love to spend some time with you.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Could we get together next week for coffee?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're right about them, you know, then you go, could we meet again for coffee in two weeks?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually, maybe could we meet every single week, like Greg does every Sunday afternoon with the other three guys that are on his closest team.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So build your team.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh think about who would be good to have on your team.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Third, guard the gate.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Guard the gate.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, uh, as uh I think Greg uses that phrase, and what he means by that is that there'll be people who knock on your gate that would love to spend more time with you, but you need to guard that gate and not let everybody in.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not going for bigger, that's what you're doing on Facebook, maybe.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're going for better.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to become a better person, and you want a lean team that will help you get there.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, next to last, is prune the team that you have right now.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Think about who's on your team.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Greg uses the metaphor throughout his chapter.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's been involved at times in pruning vineyards in California, I think.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to prune your team to make it better.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Realize, say, I'm a better person when that person, she or she or he is not around.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: I need to move them a little farther away.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I probably will never become the person I need to become if I'm spending lots of time and and and lots of energy with that person.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Prune your team.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Learn how to say no, he says in his chapter.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do it lovingly, do it graciously, but learn how to do it.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, build a team to live up to.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not to live down to, but to live up to.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be challenged.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be pampered.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be hanging around people that are the kind of person that I want to become.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So reach up.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't reach down.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Surround yourselves with people that will hold you accountable and challenge you even if they don't say anything at all.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the question I'm asking you this morning.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: A question that we ask you, this is step four, who's on your team?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's an old story that illustrates the power that you have at this point to make a difference in your life.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Story of a young man, a little bit of a wise acre, who was being mentored by an older sage.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I spent a lot of his time with this older man, this mentor, this sage, and one day caught a little bird.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: He says, What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take this little bird, hide it in my hand, and take it and ask my sage if he knows what's in my hand.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's really wise, he will probably guess what's in my hand, and then I'm gonna set him up.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say, is the little bird alive or is it dead?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if he says it's dead, then I'll open my hand and let it fly away and prove he's wrong.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if he says it's alive, then I'll squeeze my hand and kill the little bird.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he went to the sage, and uh, and sure enough, the sage guessed what was in his hand, that he had a little bird in his hand, and then he said, Is the little bird alive or dead?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: The sage thought for a moment, and then he said, Young man, the bird is whatever you decide that it will be.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the same is true of you and of I today, that your bird is really whatever you decide it will be, your life, whether it goes up or whether it goes down, whether the trajectory is the one that you want or the one that you've started already, the downward trajectory, that depends on you.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's up to you.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's whatever you will that it will be, it's your decision.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most important things in your decision is the team that you build to help you become what you want to become.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Bow with me in a word of prayer.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: For Greg, thank you for these dear people who have determined that they want to follow you.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for those in this room who have uh started a go forward plan and have said, you know, I'm I'm underperforming.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I really would like to get closer to God.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to improve in in some of these other areas.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, would you bless them by bringing around them people who can help them accomplish what they really want to accomplish in life for your glory.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.